THE main opposition party in Nigeria, All Progressives Congress, APC, may, in fact, be changing name very soon again. Of course the party has had a history of name-changing – from Action Congress, AC, to Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN and to the present All Progressives Congress.

Lest we forget, it started out originally as Alliance for Democracy before Bola Ahmed Tinubu and his group broke away with the soul of the party to form Action Congress. All these changes were all in search of true identity for the opposition party. And the identity, which the leadership of the APC is working very hard to sell to Nigerians albeit without much success, is that the party is a “progressive” party built on solid “integrity”.

With the shocking revelations now coming out of Ekiti State about the former APC governor, Kayode Fayemi(roundly rejected by the people of his state at the polls in his bid for second term), APC may now be aptly referred to as the All Profligate Congress. The only difference this time is that the party still retains its APC acronym. According to the newly sworn-in governor, Ayodele Fayose, the APC government of Fayemi was at its profligate best during its four years reign in Ekiti. Dr. Fayemi was alleged to have spent N50 million on the two beds, which he and his wife slept. “How can a responsible government use borrowed funds to provide this kind of luxury for the governor and his family alone in a state where a lot of people cannot afford to feed more than once in a day?” Fayose had queried through a statement released by his aide, Olayinka Oyebode.

The news of corruption, misapplication of funds and the insensitivity of the APC government of Fayemi in Ekiti is rather an unfortunate one. Fayemi came to power from a rich civil society background and was highly respected as one of the few governors who should know what governance means. And every time he spoke as the governor, he always stressed the need for putting the people first in governance and rightly or wrongly, his party, the APC celebrated him as one of their leading star performers. But as it is said, the breeze has blown and everybody can now see the undergarments of the priest.

It is cheap to dismiss Fayose as playing to the gallery just as the former governor has done through his own aide. The argument that Fayemi is not going away with the Government House does not in any way justify any ostentatious life style at the expense of the tax payers. As a matter of fact, there is nothing wrong if Fayemi, his wife and children decide to spend a billion Naira on their beds or live like Abu Dhabi princes as long as the money is coming from their private pockets. But to luxuriate at the expense of the suffering masses whose salaries and pension the former governor struggled to pay as and when due, is not only wicked but equally criminal.

What is coming out now from Ekiti is only possible because a new government has taken over. And this is one of the advantages that periodic election, an attribute of liberal democracy, confers on the people. The APC intellectuals who, in their bid to wish away the popular rejection of Fayemi by the Ekiti electorate, regarded the result of the election as a “mystery” can now understand what happened. The elitist regime of Fayemi more than alienated the people, the sovereign owners of power. With the public outcry that has greeted the revelations of the wasteful use of public resources to service the ostentatious fantasies of the former governor and his family, it is all too clear that the people of the state were never consulted on the building and furnishing of the new government house. It is rather sad that a governor who publicly claims that he cannot condescend to the level of what is now the popular definition of stomach infrastructure is spending multi-million naira on “bed infrastructure”.

What is said to have happened in Ekiti under the APC government of Fayemi betrays the hypocrisy of the party and its catechetical verbosity on fighting corruption. This is the same party that its leaders, including Bola Tinubu, Lai Mohammed, Nasir el-Rufai, General Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar daily accuse the PDP government of Goodluck Jonathan of condoning corruption. If the scandal of “bed infrastructure” under the APC government of Fayemi had happened in any PDP state government or at the centre, Lai Mohammed would have been parroting it everywhere how the ruling party is plundering the country. Why has Lai lost his voice? Surely, he must have something to say about the APC plundering of Ekiti State!

Ekiti State is not by any means one of the richest states in the country. And if this magnitude of corruption has already been discovered in the first week of Fayose’s ascension to power, it leaves to imagination what could be going on in the richer states controlled by APC.

like Lagos, Edo, Kano Rivers. And when it is considered that Fayemi may be gentler and more naïve than the other APC governors, then your guess is as good as that of this writer. From Lagos to Benin City, from Port Harcourt to Kano, it is not enough to showcase what bridges and roads that have been built; it is equally significant to prudently justify the costs of these projects.

The reports doing the round is that APC is throwing in anything and everything at its disposal to fight the 2015 general elections; yet, this does not justify the alarming profligacy of its governors. Already, there is an allegation by the Rivers State chapter of the PDP that the N19 Billion that Governor Rotimi Amaechi plans to withdraw from the state’s Reserved Fund is meant for the prosecution of General Buhari’s presidential campaign to which he is lobbying to be named the running mate. With the revelations coming out of Fayemi’s Ekiti, and Buhari’s claim of “insolvency”, who can bet against this allegation?

John Ainofenokhai, a public affairs analyst,wrote from Benin, Edo Sate.